What is the real purpose of the pictures?

A question raised by the type of media used in Persepolis is the effectiveness of the pictures. If the book was not a graphic novel would it have the same effect? One page to look at is page 11 where it said, “’2500 years of tyranny and submission’ as my father said. First our emperors. Then the Arab invasion from the west. Followed by the Mongolian invasion from the east. And finally modern imperialism.” For each of these things, the author has a picture depicting how event happened and who was involved. People would not read the book the same if it just stated that list of events and did not draw the pictures to go along with them. The pictures give the reader a sort of background information to the event. It shows that the reader does not have to know all about modern imperialism to understand. This is because the author defines it for the reader in the form of a picture. Also in this picture, there is drawn Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam was only used to represent the U.S. and he was obviously not actually there. The picture is only a metaphor of how it actually went but without the drawing of Uncle Sam in the picture, the reader would never pick up on that hint. Without that picture, the author would have to just say that the U.S. was a big part of modern imperialism. Another example is the picture on page 43 when Marji’s father says, “Let’s talk about something else. Let’s enjoy our new freedom!” Then her mom says, “Now that the devil has left.” Without pictures this is a pretty meaningless statement. Marji’s parents aren’t really saying that much, but when you look at the picture, there is a dragon looking thing in the background of the picture that looks half real and half just like a shadow. It is creeping up of the family and hidden yet the reader can see it clearly. Without this picture, the reader would not pick up on the fact that there is something that the family does not know. The last picture to consider is on page 71 where is shows Marji floating in space looking bored and empty and at the top she says, “and so I was lost, without any bearings… what could be worse than that?” Near the middle of the page, it portrays someone exclaiming, “MARJI, RUN TO THE BASEMENT! WE’RE BEING BOMBED!” The caption at the bottom of the page says, “it was the beginning of the war.” Just by the picture and the placement of the words, it is clear to the reader that Marji was just sitting by herself somewhere deep in thought when she was suddenly interrupted by who we assume is her mom telling her to come to the basement. With the aid of the one picture, it was simple to understand what was going on. Without the picture there, the author would have had to explain that Marji was thinking and what she was thinking about and then the fact that her mother interrupted her out of nowhere. The picture also draws attention to what Marji was thinking. If there was no picture the reader would not give much thought to what was thinking and only about the fact that they were being bombed. Since this is all going on in one picture, the reader looks at it all as a whole. The background of the picture is outer space and Marji is floating in the middle. That shows the importance of her state of mind at the time. Without the words we would still be able to pick up on this message as well as having no clue that they were being bombed.